Abstract

Ludwig Wittgenstein's later-period work is concerned with developing a new direction for philosophy as conceptual and linguistic analysis. This philosophical practice depends for its success on changes in the individual will of the philosopher who is pursuing philosophical questions. These changes primarily involve recognition of the extent to which certain pictures or conceptions shape our norms of description by way of the descriptive metaphors and analogies that become embedded in our language. This acknowledgment of the degree to which these pictures guide our philosophical conceptualizations takes the form of beginning to see the phenomena and practical actions of everyday life through finer linguistic and contextual differentiations. This seeing requires a reorientation of something like one's intellectual sensibilities and ethical expectations concerning what one is likely to accomplish when pursuing philosophical questions. In line with this reorientation, Wittgenstein's end in view for philosophical knowledge becomes acknowledgment of the parameters and limits of intelligible language and intelligible thought.